Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a “mental health condition where distressing, intrusive thoughts (obsessions) trigger repetitive behaviors (compulsions) aimed at reducing anxiety or preventing something bad from occurring.” When most people think of OCD, they think of orderliness, cleanliness, color-coded closets, pristine lists, and grouping your Skittles into colors before eating them. Television and movies like Monk make the disorder look quirky, even comedic, or somehow “positive,” which deepens the misunderstanding of an incredibly disruptive and debilitating mental illness.

Many intrusive thoughts, anxieties, and obsessions have nothing to do with contamination or orderliness but often attack that which you value or fear the most. Scary, taboo, or unpleasant thoughts and feelings can latch onto someone’s children, values, relationships, health, and faith, leading to such a profound distortion of reality that one’s entire life becomes upended, thanks to the anxiety and resulting compulsions. Furthermore, many with OCD do not struggle as much with external, physical compulsions like cleaning, checking, or organizing, which is known as “Pure O.” Instead, they are fighting battles inside their heads.

This list intends to examine 10 OCD themes that have nothing to do with being clean and organized.

Related: Top 10 Best Coping Mechanisms for Mental Health

10 Postpartum

“I’m going to kill my baby,” thinks a new, loving, happy mother. Once she has this thought, panic and fear take over. Why would she think that? She wants this child and loves it with her entire being. The thought persists, and she wants to make it go away because it isn’t true. She decides that the only way she will hold her child is if her partner is present. It works, but only for a while. Soon, she refuses to hold her child because she fears her thoughts might come true. If she doesn’t touch the baby, she can’t kill it. Her fear, however, does not subside, and to worsen her experience, she is not bonding with the child she loves the way she wants to.

Such is an example of what it could be like for someone with postpartum OCD (pOCD), based on examples of the disorder provided by the International OCD Foundation.

Someone with pOCD may experience intrusive, unwanted thoughts about harming or losing their child, so they engage in compulsions or rituals such as avoidance or reassurance-seeking, hoping to get rid of the thoughts. Still, the cycle usually worsens the person’s experience rather than helps it. Without proper understanding and treatment, it can drive the sufferer further away from that which they truly love: their family.^[1]

9 Incest

Many OCD themes revolve around taboo or even violent subjects that bring immense distress to the person who has them. One such theme is “incest OCD.” When someone experiences incest OCD, they are plagued with thoughts like “What if I’m sexually attracted to my father?” or “What if I touched my sister sexually once and I don’t remember?” or “What if my desire to be around my family is proof that I’m actually sexually attracted to them?”

These thoughts can be worsened by what’s called a “groinal response,” which is a physical reaction in the genitals that feels similar to arousal, as it can include twitching, tingling, lubrication, or even an erection. The difference is that these symptoms are rooted in hyper-awareness and not true sexual arousal.

Someone with incest OCD will have such a deep fear of sexual attraction toward family members that they will avoid contact with those people, spend hours researching similar experiences on Google or Reddit for reassurance, reviewing memories, checking for groinal responses, or confessing their thoughts to others to abdicate themselves of guilt.

Someone with incest OCD does not care about their house being clean or how many times they wash their hands—they simply no longer wish to be terrified of their own bodies and their own families.^[2]

8 Pedophilia

Since OCD loves to latch onto the taboo and go against someone’s values, sexual themes are prominent in the OCD community. However, one is especially upsetting: pedophilia OCD.

Someone who experiences pedophile-themed OCD is the complete opposite of an actual pedophile. These people experience horrible, unwanted thoughts about doing sexual harm to children and spend so much time and energy on compulsions in an attempt to make the guilt, fear, shame, and anxiety go away.

They live in fear, believing they are the worst kind of human out there.

Thoughts include, “Did I look at that child for too long? Why did I do that? Does that mean I am aroused by them? Am I sexually attracted to children? Am I a creep? Am I a pedophile? Am I going to accidentally one day inappropriately touch a child? Why am I thinking these thoughts? Is it because I actually want to? Is it because I secretly like it?”

To an outsider, it seems rather obvious that this person does not feel attraction toward children, is not a pedophile, and will not become one. However, to the individual with OCD, these thoughts are real, terrifying, and urgent, and they must be dealt with immediately so that those fears do not come true.

Someone with OCD may avoid walking or driving past schools or playgrounds, therefore taking too long to get to work. They may not visit nieces and nephews or isolate themselves from their own children. They may do excessive research, confess their thoughts, or even go so far as to watch pornography just to see if they become aroused.

This particular theme comes with a great deal of shame, guilt, self-hatred, and embarrassment. Thanks to inaccurate portrayals of OCD and social misunderstandings, people with this form of OCD and other subtypes with stigmatized themes, help is often not sought out by those who may need it most.^[3]

7 Sexual Orientation

Sexual orientation OCD (SO-OCD) is the obsessive need to know for certain your sexuality, who you’re attracted to, and your sexual identity. Most people do question their sexuality from time to time. Others have stories of grappling with it, like finding the right time or the right way to come out as gay, for example. However, someone with SO-OCD is completely ensnared in a quest to know beyond all doubt exactly who they are and who they are attracted to, to the point that their lives can become completely disrupted.

Take Teagan, for example. She is a young woman whose testimonial for Rogers Behavioral Health is a prime example of what SO-OCD, and OCD in general, can put someone through. She writes, “I saw a TikTok that said, ‘If you get butterflies when looking at the same gender, sorry… you’re gay.’ Most people would hear this and either laugh or just move on without even questioning themselves, but not me and my doubt-infested thoughts. This sent me into a spiral like I’d never been in before… I could no longer see the world or who I was the same. I began having multiple, intense panic attacks back-to-back… I just ‘NEEDED’ to know if I was gay… like NOW!!”

Fears of ruining relationships, lying to oneself, not knowing one’s own identity, possibly facing stigma or ostracization by “coming out,” or not loving one’s current partner if they find out they are not of that orientation can drive someone with SO-OCD to time-consuming and distressing compulsions.

Reality and fear tend to get blended with OCD, and when that begins to attack your own sense of identity, that’s frightening.^[4]

6 Suicide

One of the most difficult themes of OCD to talk about and treat is suicidal OCD. While all thoughts of suicide should be treated with the utmost care and concern, there is a subtype of OCD that is actually driving the person to do the opposite of taking their own life.

Suicidal OCD is different from true suicidal ideation in that the thoughts of self-harm are unwanted and terrifying, and the distress the thoughts cause leads to extreme measures to prevent suicide—not act on it.

Suicidal OCD can manifest in many ways. It could be something like driving on an overpass and picturing yourself swerving your car over the edge or seeing a train and imagining yourself jumping in front of it. However, the thought fills you with fear and shock because you don’t want to do those things. Similarly, if you are going through a distressing time, you may think, “I don’t want to be here anymore,” which is immediately followed by shock, distress, fear, and panic because, again, the thought is not actually true.

Someone in these scenarios may avoid bridges, trains, roads, windows, and balconies. They may also avoid knives or guns, get rid of their weapons—knives, guns, and ammunition—or confess their thoughts to someone so they can make sure they don’t actually do it. They may question themselves and wonder if these thoughts are normal, if others have them too, and if they are actually likely to harm themselves.

These behaviors are meant to eliminate the thoughts and feelings because the person does not want them. Again, however, all thoughts of this nature ought to be treated with the utmost seriousness and case, as all cases are unique to the individual.

This section of this list is only meant to highlight the existence of a distressing category of obsessive-compulsive order that is a real experience that goes far beyond the quirkiness of a color-coded list.^[5]

5 Harm

Harm OCD is a broad theme that can include harm to oneself or others and can be a horrifying experience for someone with the disorder.

Someone with any variation of harm OCD might think things like: “What if I push this person in front of a car?” If they are feeling angry, they might think, “I should just stab them,” and then immediately be overcome with panic and ask themselves, “Why did I just think that?” If they are feeling distressed, sad, or frustrated, they might think about harming themselves and then freak out about having that thought in the first place.

Someone cutting vegetables might look at the knife and think about killing someone with it. A new mother might think about throwing her child down the stairs. They may fear they are a serial killer in the making, fear they are possibly self-harming or suicidal, or worry that they might “snap” and do something to themselves or others.

The media has taken this subtype and run with it in the wrong direction, making it a stigmatized subtype and furthering the misunderstanding of this serious mental illness.

Trap (2024) is a horror film that portrays a killer with obsessive-compulsive disorder and makes a connection between those urges and his kills. The film has faced criticism for its inaccurate and dangerous portrayal of the mental health condition because those with harm OCD are the least likely to do harm. In fact, they are those who highly value kindness, care, and safety.^[6]

4 Death

The fear of death is commonplace and persistent. Even those who do not actively “fear” death likely experience it when confronted with it. After all, our brains are hardwired to survive and resist death.

Unlike the normal discomfort and fear of death, this subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder takes it to an entirely new level. Someone with death OCD grapples with obsessive intrusive thoughts about their own death, the process of dying, death coming to loved ones, and the afterlife. These fears are accompanied by compulsions, such as asking for reassurance that you won’t die, excessive research about illnesses or the afterlife, or avoiding certain images, movies, places, or objects that remind you of death or the afterlife.

For example, someone with intense death-related OCD may fear that they will suddenly die. To mitigate the fear, they may ask their spouse, “Do you think I’m going to have a heart attack?” They may avoid driving to prevent a car accident. They may also avoid hospitals or driving past cemeteries and funeral homes. One writer shared her story and said she avoided imagery and mentions of the Devil because she associated it with the afterlife.

It’s also not uncommon for those suffering from OCD to engage in magical thinking. This is when superstitious thoughts take hold, and you believe that your thoughts, anxieties, and triggers are causally related to external events. For example, someone with OCD may see a Halloween costume of the Devil and interpret it as a “sign” or an omen that their death is nigh. They may have a dream in which a loved one dies, and they will live in extreme anxiety, believing their dream is a prophecy.

When this happens, compulsive behaviors once again set in and can take over a person’s life.^[7]

3 Religious Scrupulosity

There is one subtype of OCD that somewhat incorporates superstition, and that is religious or moral scrupulosity OCD. Someone suffering from scrupulosity OCD has unwanted and pervasive fears around morality and religion.

Fears of doing something “wrong,” not being “pure” enough, not practicing religion perfectly, sinning, death, divine punishment, and possession, as well as obsessions with rituals, sacrifice, and doctrine, take over the lives of those who grapple with scrupulosity OCD. Subsequently, they engage in compulsions and rituals to help mitigate the intrusive, relentless thoughts. Examples include prayer, confession (to a religious leader or a loved one), rituals done to perfection or until they feel “just right,” hyper-awareness of behavior, scanning memories or monitoring thoughts for sins, and avoiding places or events that could trigger these thoughts or lead something “bad” happening.

This particular category of OCD can be particularly distressing, as our religion (or ethics, if you are not “religious”) plays a part in our day-to-day lives. Concerns with how we treat our partners, whether we made the “right” decision, or if we honored our god(s) with genuine, correct reverence are daily engagements. When our thoughts and actions become so rigid and full of anxiety, it can be difficult to know where healthy practice ends and self-sabotage begins.

That blurred line between anxiety and reality is difficult for anyone, regardless of which part of your life it affects.^[8]

2 Relationship

With OCD, all themes stem from levels of uncertainty, unpredictability, or an overall lack of control. Most OCD thoughts tend to stem from slim possibilities or have little to no evidence to substantiate them. With harm OCD, for example, the person knows that they will not cause another harm at the end of the day. Someone with incest OCD ultimately knows that their thoughts are not real—even if it takes a lot of work to get there. The anxiety that these thoughts cause is ultimately proof that they are egodystonic, meaning they go against the person’s values and identity.

Relationship OCD, however, is considered to be an especially challenging subtype of OCD.

Someone with ROCD constantly experiences doubts about their relationship. This typically manifests in romantic relationships but could latch onto any important relationship.

ROCD sows seeds of doubt about your love for your partner, their love for you, infidelity, the strength of the relationship, whether or not it’s worth your time, your partner’s flaws, attraction, and ability to handle conflict. While some relationship doubts are normal, someone with OCD cannot tolerate these doubts or questions, leading to chronic, intense anxiety, depression, panic, or paranoia about themselves, their partner, and/or their relationship.

This can lead to compulsions like researching relationship topics on Google or Reddit, asking others constantly for advice or reassurance (including from their partner), confessing their thoughts to their partner (including fears about cheating or not loving them), checking for “signs” that everything is okay (or not), or testing yourself or your partner by flirting with others—just to see how you or they feel, so you can “make sure.”

This subtype of OCD can be particularly painful due to the potential to sabotage healthy relationships by responding to problems where none exist or to stay in unhealthy relationships by writing your doubts off as ROCD.

Considering that OCD usually latches onto that which you value or want the most, someone with ROCD has the potential to be isolated and distressed, given that they feel constant anxiety and doubt. That anxiety is present whether they are single or in a relationship or whether that relationship is working for them or not.

It creates a cloud of doubt and loneliness so profound that even that which you love the most feels unsafe and contaminated.^[9]

1 Meta (Do I Even Have OCD?)

The kicker of all OCD subtypes just might be what is called meta OCD. This theme focuses on the disorder itself, questioning whether your spirals and behaviors are even OCD at all.

What if this isn’t OCD? What if I’ve been lying to myself or my therapist, and we’ve got it all wrong? What if I’m doing my treatment wrong? What if I’m stuck like this forever? What if I missed something?

The OCD begins to attack the individual, their treatment, their progress, and their reality, which can completely sabotage their treatment and overall wellness.

Compulsions associated with this theme include going to multiple therapy appointments or avoiding them, excessively researching OCD or taking quizzes, ruminating or other mental compulsions, or asking others for reassurance.

This theme is sneaky, as it can develop after someone has begun treatment for their OCD with another theme, thus proving to be another obstacle for them to tackle in therapy. Fortunately, meta OCD is not uncommon and can be handled just like any other theme.^[10]

One hundred years ago, Americans loved Christmas just as much as we do today, but there are many differences between the celebrations of the Roaring Twenties and the 2020s. Many holiday themes differ in both design and participation, and some have faded away, much like melting snow.

Similarities between the two decades do exist, however. One being a sense of transition, as both started amid a global pandemic. So while reflecting back upon the 1920s at this festive time of year, let us remind ourselves that countless brunos, flappers, and moonshiners merrily lifted their glasses of eggnog with no more of a clue than we have today as to what the new year might bring…

Related: 10 Facts Crushing The Notion That Christmas Cards Are Boring

10 Santa Hasn’t Aged a Day

If you take a good look at pictures of Christmas celebrations from the 1920s, you might take note of the black-and-white photography, the outdated style of clothing, and the antiquated architecture. But what you might notice with surprise is that Santa looked basically the same as he does today, with his long, white beard, jolly smile, and rounded belly, still dressed in his red cap and coat, both with white trim. Truly, the image of the “jolly old elf” has changed drastically throughout the centuries, as the St. Nicholas of medieval Europe was portrayed to be a thin man in saintly garb. However, the modern version of the portly guy has been fully formed as we know him in the U.S. since the mid-1800s.

A hundred years back, he was often referred to as Father Christmas, a separate folkloric entity from England that had culturally merged with the American concept of Santa Claus. For promotional events, Santa (aka St. Nick or Kris Kringle) sometimes arrived via airplane, as if flying in directly from the North Pole. During parades, he was frequently attended to by little, pre-politically correct Eskimos in lieu of elves. The big guy also appeared in many print ads during the ’20s—a good number of them hawking cigarettes or carbonated water, which was in high demand for mixing with Prohibition-era moonshine.

As you look through those black-and-white photos mentioned above, you’re liable to come across department store Santas (a la Macy’s) greeting kids in a makeshift “Santaland,” proving that holiday commercialism was certainly alive and well a century back. And while the actors who took such roles were often stereotyped as bums and winos trying to make an easy buck, modern-day professional Santas are raking it in. There are booking agencies that hire Santas to work malls and events during the season all across the country. The average salary is roughly 40 grand a year, with high achievers making significantly more! It’s like when ho-ho-ho meets ka-ching!^[1]

9 What About Santa’s Crew?

The very first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade (called a Christmas Parade) was held in 1924. Starting a long-lasting tradition, Santa Claus arrived last in line on a sleigh pulled by two horses representing reindeer, though it seems he left his little helpers back home at the North Pole [LINK 2]. As you look through old photos of the decade, costumed elves are hard to find despite being prevalent in literature and art. Norman Rockwell’s classic painting Santa with Elves appeared on a cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1922, wherein he depicted the little guys as being just a few inches tall. That was standard for elfin imagery of the day; it wasn’t until actual people began playing elves in Christmas movies and, later, on TV that our pop-cultural perception of them sprouted to at least the size of a child.

By 1920 the concept of a matronly Mrs. Claus had already been deeply ingrained within the ever-growing pool of Christmas lore, right alongside reindeer with names such as Dancer, Prancer, and Donner. But Rudolph the red-nosed wonder wouldn’t join the team until 1939 when he first appeared in a children’s book for a department store in Chicago. And Frosty the Snowman wouldn’t make the roster until 1950, being the subject of a silly song sung by Gene Autry.

During the ’20s, the concept of Santa Claus was often referenced with Jack Frost, an impish sprite who brought on frigid weather while nipping at people’s noses. He was the subject of many popular stories and poems, and his wintry presence translated well into Christmas themes.^[2]

8 The Season of Giving

A hundred years ago, a boy might have written a letter to Santa requesting a sled, a BB gun, a Lionel train set, or a rather novel item at the time called Tinkertoys! In her own letter, a girl might have asked for a doll, doll clothes, a dollhouse, and one of those newfangled, little red wagons to tote all that doll stuff around. Moms who were lucky enough to live in homes with electricity hoped for modern appliances such as vacuum cleaners, toasters, and washing machines. Dads could probably expect practical gifts such as socks, tools, and ties—and a hundred years later, they still can.

Fancy wrapping paper, similar to what we use today, was expensive and not for the average household, whose occupants generally wrapped presents in much-cheaper tissue paper. Unfortunately, scotch tape hadn’t yet been invented, so the paper was either bound with string or secured with gummed package seals, some of which contained holiday designs and were thus called “Christmas Seals.” Such gifts were placed around bulky Christmas trees, which were often as wide as they were tall.

Christmas gifts for children nowadays are much more gender-neutral than they were a hundred years ago, with STEM toys such as LEGO sets and wise little robots being appropriate for both girls and boys. And teens are into tech, a category that offers forth a wide range of gadgetry only gender-identifiable by perhaps the color of the phone case or the pattern on the smartwatch. Fortunately, Amazon can deliver these items right to your doorstep, but they won’t slide down your chimney with them.^[3]

7 What the Dickens!

If you looked through cookbooks from the 1920s, you would find recipes for a complete Christmas dinner, with suggestions such as roast duck with plum pudding or roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. The concept of Christmas dinner had become very Dickensian, and increasingly so throughout the decade, as did other aspects of the holiday. The ’20s kicked off on the tail end of the Spanish flu pandemic, which sprung from World War One, and people were ready for more innocent times, which included a Victorian-era type Christmas. Nostalgia for the warmth of the holiday as Dickens portrayed it pervaded both art and design, and sprigs of holly replaced pine boughs across America.

It was a false nostalgia, however. The stereotypical, Victorian-type Christmas had never existed in the United States, and it had only half-existed in England. Yet it had a nice feel to it. Top hats, antique candle holders, and geese became holiday imagery, and celebrants began caroling in groups despite the fact prior to Dickens’s novel, A Christmas Carol, it hadn’t been popular in England for years.

Where will our post-pandemic holiday trends take us a hundred years later? Already Americans seem to be putting up their Christmas decorations much earlier than usual and more abundantly, and increasingly Black Friday sales are starting the day after Halloween. Perhaps, here in the almost dystopian 2020s, exorbitance replaces the subtlety of top hats and holly…^[4]

6 Holiday Broadcasting

No matter what your favorite television program might be, odds are, most years, it’ll air a special Christmas presentation. Holiday themes seem to be good for ratings, whether it be Peter Griffith’s yuletide hijinks in the town of Quahog, a Brooklyn Nine-Nine caroling contest, or even a Goldbergs’ Hanukkah episode. With streaming services such as Hulu, Apple TV+, and YouTube, along with holiday programming on regular channels, we can watch such timeless classics as It’s a Wonderful Life, Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas each year. And it’s not hard to find nonstop holiday programming during the month of December.

But a hundred years ago, there was no television. Instead, families gathered around the radio, often in the evening, for entertainment, and lucky for them popular music had just begun to be publicly broadcast. Holiday selections such as “Adeste Fideles” (by the Associated Glee Clubs of America) and “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers” (performed by three different bands early on in the decade) brought Christmas cheer right into many homes.

Holiday parties of the ’20s often gravitated around the sophistication of the radio, and delicious hors d’oeuvres would have been served, such as deviled eggs or fancy sandwiches using that exotic, new food item—Wonder Bread. Eggnog powder was available to be added to milk, and though Prohibition was active, on Christmas Eve, the powder was probably also frequently mixed with rum. And there was always room for Jell-O back in the ’20s, as it was considered to be “the bee’s knees,” most especially the “red flavor” during Christmastime.

Throughout the decade, one theme that was broadcast rather often was presentations of A Christmas Carol, with its very first radio reading having aired on December 22, 1922. This is no surprise due to all the Victorian-era holiday nostalgia of the day, which is probably why the tale was cinematically released a total of four times during the decade. That’s an awful lot of plum pudding…^[5]

5 Caroling

The radio was not the only option for music in the ’20s. Phonographs, early forms of the record player, were in many homes, but only a handful of Christmas records were available to play. Fortunately, back in the day, popular music was released both on disc and as sheet music, and in the early half of the century, pianos were often more easy to find than phonographs. Throwing a Christmas party with a piano lent a level of sophistication for the guests, who were more than happy to sing together songs like “The Twelve Days of Christmas” while sipping smuggled champagne and snacking on that new and revolutionary delicacy of desserts—the pineapple upside-down cake.

People back then enjoyed making their own music, so it was only natural that caroling would become a popular Christmas tradition during the decade. The fact that Dickens mentioned it in A Christmas Carol must have also inspired many merry groups of people to trudge through snowfall, their breaths freezing before them as they sang, even though caroling was almost a lost tradition in England when the book was written in the mid-1800s. And while most of the Christmas songs we have today hadn’t yet been written, popular carols of the day were “Silent Night,” “Jingle Bells,” “The First Noel,” “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” and “Auld Lang Syne.” Back then, carolers went door to door, and their holiday visits were warmly welcomed, often reciprocated with warm mugs of hot cocoa or cider…

Boy, times have certainly changed. Caroling is a rarity these days, and most Americans have never participated in the activity. Besides, people no longer need to make music to listen to it, especially when it comes to Christmas music. Radio stations offer holiday content 24/7/365, and their selections are often from vastly different genres. In 2014 a search was done on Spotify-Echo Nest to see how many Christmas songs exist, with alternative parameters such as winter and inspirational themes included in the tally. And guess what—914,047 individual tracks popped up, which, after taking into account songs appearing on multiple compilation albums, boils down to 180,660 selections of unique content. That would make for some serious caroling.^[6]

4 Fruitcake Humor

Back in the ’20s, there were many delectable desserts served at Christmas, such as butterscotch cake, raisin pie, and, of course, elegant Jell-O molds. And off to one side, there was often a solid brick of fruitcake—untouched, ridiculed, and perhaps regifted.

The mass production of fruitcake in the early 1900s, using cheap ingredients and sold in mail-order tin containers, offered a dry imitation of the once rich and delicious dessert. And as for homemade fruitcake, Prohibition took away the key ingredient—whiskey! Many etymologists trace the phrase “nuttier than a fruitcake” to the 1920s, along with other derogatory meanings of the word which sprung from the idiom. Fruitcake humor, in general, seems to have gotten started during the decade, which makes you wonder why, a full hundred years later, we’re still gifting the darn things…

The thing about fruitcake is that it doesn’t really have to suck. The British seem to do it right, and it’s a staple at royal weddings. But Americans do not take the dessert seriously at all. Since 1996 the town of Manitou Springs, Colorado, has held a yearly fruitcake toss in January, an event that also collects donations for a local food pantry. And participants of National Fruitcake Day, an unofficial holiday falling on December 27, seem to poke fun at the edible doorstop more so than honor it. Some people even seem unable to say the word “fruitcake” without laughing.

The concept of fruitcake humor has been around for a hundred years at this point, and since it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon, perhaps we should revisit the Brits’ version of the dessert. Between dried fruit soaked overnight in dark tea, along with the perfect combo of nuts, spices, and fine sherry, the outcome is a confection that no Coloradan, nor any other American, would ever catapult into the horizon.^[7]

3 The Ongoing Jesus vs. Santa Arm Wrestling Match

Between bouts of “Happy Holidays” vs. “Merry Christmas” on social media, at the workplace, and often while carving the ham, we think back to a much less politically correct time…perhaps a hundred years ago…and we peacefully smile.

Well, think again! In 1921 the iconic tycoon Henry Ford raised a storm by publicly decrying the secularization of the holiday, using non-religious-themed Christmas cards as an example. His declaration included anti-Semitic statements accusing Jewish department store owners of both profiteering and conspiracy! His words generated widespread political debate.

It’s been a hundred years since Henry Ford’s angry rant, but there have been many others since who’ve jumped in the ring. In the past century, we have seen public school pageants canceled, Nativity scenes picketed, and the popularization of the phrase “Keep Christ in Christmas.” We’ve seen SANTA anagrammed into SATAN and Christmas parties renamed “winter celebrations.” Of course, we’ve also all seen headlines about banning Christmas trees in public buildings, First Amendment standoffs, and the highly publicized Kentucky “Charlie Brown” bill.

After a full century of seasonal debate, these issues, much like fruitcake humor, are probably not going away anytime soon. But unlike fruitcake humor, Christmas protests from either side can get rather heated and intense, an unfortunate aspect of a holiday that suggests “peace on Earth, goodwill to men.”^[8]

2 The Christmas Tree

Christmas trees of the 1920s were rather…well—ugly by today’s standards. They were squat and bulky and sometimes wider than they were tall, which was generally the result of cutting the tops off a pine or a fir. Such trees were decorated with glass ornaments and festive, die-cut cardboard shapes, alongside small toys, snacks, and stringed boxes of animal crackers. Colorful garlands were generously draped upon the tree along with an incredibly flammable, though beautiful, type of tinsel.

Putz houses (no joke) were popular nativity scenes or Christmas villages built beneath the tree, often utilizing such items as cardboard, figurines, small toys, and glitter. Artificial trees of German origin made from goose feathers became popular in America during the ’20s, and often the boughs were tipped with red berries that doubled as candle holders. How accommodating…

Christmas these days is a lot less combustible, with much safer items such as flame-retardant tinsel being sold to the public. In 2019 more than twice the number of people who bought real trees put up artificial ones, new or previously used. Though most artificial trees are also flame-retardant, there is an increased concern for pre-lit models that run the risk of electrical fires. Back in the ‘20s. the safest thing to do before leaving the room was to blow out the Christmas tree candles, and it seems the safest thing to do today before turning in is to pull the plug.^[9]

1 Putting up the Decorations

The average household of the ’20s didn’t put up the tree until right before Christmas and often on Christmas Eve. Stringed lights were expensive in those days, and most people at the turn of the decade didn’t have electricity, so lighting candles on the boughs of the tree, as previously mentioned, was their only option for holiday lights. People were well aware of the risk of fire, so they lit such candles right at Christmas or the night before, and only for a short period, with the tree usually in front of a window for neighbors to see and with a bucket of water nearby in case it burst into flames.

Stockings were actual socks filled with fruit, nuts, candy, and toys that kids would find the morning of Christmas hanging from a doorknob or bedpost. The habit of hanging stockings on the fireplace didn’t happen in the ’20s as, being winter, most fireplaces would have had a roaring fire going to heat the home.

The lack of households with electricity and the high cost of Christmas lights kept outdoor decorations humbly unlit. People often decorated their front entrances with green boughs of this and sprigs of that, and a large wreath with a big red bow might have been placed upon the door about the same time the tree went up inside. Outdoor displays were subtle and dignified, often with a Victorian-era slant and always respectful toward neighbors and visitors alike.

At least that’s how the decade started…

Inspired by a tragic fire in New York City caused by tree candles, the NOMA (National Outfit Manufacturer’s Association) Electric Corporation was formed in the mid-1920s from a trade union specializing in Christmas lights. They offered a safe alternative to candles and, as competition with other companies, lowered the prices. With more and more households acquiring electricity, soon their lights were strung up both indoors and out across America to colorfully brighten the season.

Today we seem to put up our holiday decorations earlier each year, and we spend billions in the process. Outdoor Christmas displays have become both complex and competitive, with whole neighborhoods lighting up the night. And often added to these light displays are oversized ornamentation such as waving inflatable snowmen on the lawn, Santa with sleigh and reindeer on the roof, and rows of toy soldiers perhaps lining the drive.

You can even deck your house, trees, and entire yard, if you wish, with elaborate pixel lights that flash and shimmer in time to music, and with 180,660 different Christmas songs to choose from, it’s tempting not to keep them up all year round.^[10]